It Is About the Bike

By Edward Koren

Published: January 30, 2005

BICYCLE
The History.
By David V. Herlihy.
Illustrated. 470 pp. Yale University Press. $35.

As an addicted cyclist, I must come clean about a certain ambivalence concerning David V. Herlihy's first book. While ''Bicycle'' is immensely absorbing, I was often compelled to put it aside. It was as if the author himself were imploring me to take a break and come outside and play. A passage cited from an editorial in Brooklyn Life in 1895, written during the height of the cycling boom, nicely conveys the fealty to our mechanical mounts that I and many others have today: ''A ride in its saddle is the perfection of motion and the acme of gentle exercise. Once there, a man or woman wants to be there most of their time. The desire grows. And this is the reason why bicycling is not a fad, but something that is going to last so long as men and women have legs.''

Herlihy's descriptions of the bicycle's birth start with very early efforts to replace the horse with a human-powered mechanical substitute that would not only surpass the animal in speed and practicality but also be widely affordable -- what would come to be known as the ''people's nag.'' The first primitive human-powered mechanical horse -- the draisine or velocipede (Latin for ''fast foot'') -- was introduced in Germany by Karl von Drais in 1817, and quickly after in France, England and the United States. The rider sat in a saddle, supported by a brace suspended between two equally sized carriage wheels. Propulsion was provided by the rider, walking or running, much like the present-day two-wheeled child's scooter, dependent on pushing away with a foot on the ground for momentum. Drais estimated that the draisine could achieve a speed of 5 or 6 miles per hour at a walking gait; running, it could reach up to 12 miles an hour.

The American portraitist Charles Wilson Peale was enamored of the velocipede. Peale used his ''as a welcome diversion from his arduous painting projects,'' Herlihy writes. ''Whenever his back began to ache, he would take a few spins atop his velocipede in the 'salubrious air' of his garden, and return to his easel thoroughly invigorated.''

Because of a multitude of obstacles -- social, economic and technological -- the velocipede sputtered to the end of its usefulness rather quickly. But it did encourage and energize the search for a truly workable human-powered vehicle and served as an inspiration for the modern bicycle. The breakthrough occurred in France in 1867, during what Herlihy calls the ''boneshaker'' era. With the addition of a rudimentary mechanical crank and pedals attached to the front wheel's hub, the rider propelled himself forward using pedals rather than his feet, and could stop by pedaling backward, or, with fancier machines, activate a brake consisting of a metal spoon pressed to the iron tire of the rear wheel. The machine caught on very quickly, and became, according to La Vie Parisienne, ''the amusement of golden youth and the dream of employees.'' The Paris correspondent of The New York Times described the bicycle, still called the velocipede, as being able to easily attain 12 miles per hour, achieve ''great economy of time as well as money'' and ''immense development of muscle and lung,'' and foster ''independence of character,'' giving urban dwellers personal mobility and freedom. In an observation that could well be written today, the dispatch concluded: ''Is it not absurd, is it not a disgrace to the inventive age we live in, to see a man obliged to employ, in order to get through the street, a great vehicle, as large almost as a house? So let us have the velocipedes.''

In 1868, ''the velocipede craze reached new heights throughout France,'' Herlihy says. ''It is extraordinary what strides the mania for these machines is making here,'' a British correspondent in Paris wrote. ''Not only does one meet them flying down the Champs-?ys? and along the Rue de Rivoli, but many miles from Notre-Dame one sees them scudding along interminable white country roads.''

By early 1869, these first bicycles caught on in the United States, and The New York Times reported, ''Never before in the history of manufactures in this country has arisen such a demand for an article.'' Henry Ward Beecher rhapsodized that riding was ''rational recreation'' and, Herlihy writes, predicted that ''his flock would soon pedal its way to his services.'' The journalist Charles A. Dana, another ardent bicycle enthusiast, proposed an elevated bicycle path to run the length of Manhattan. But by the end of 1869, enthusiasm for the bicycle faltered, then died. The passionate interest was based on its promise as cheap, efficient transportation and as a means of healthy recreation, neither of which had been realized. The promise would have to wait for another generation of technologically improved machines.

The high mount, a new style of bicycle using wire-spoke wheels and rubber tires, with very large front wheels (up to five feet) and very small rear ones (no more than 16 inches), became popular in England in the early 1870's. They were much faster than any bicycle to date, but they were not practical machines. Because of the bicycle's expense and difficulty in riding, it was the domain of an elite group of athletic and well-to-do young men. As the secretary of the Amateur Bicycle Club declared, the mission of his organization was to promote the sport of bicycling among the ''upper, middle and higher classes of society.'' By the late 1870's, the high wheeler had migrated from Britain to Europe and North America. And it improved with constantly evolving technological innovations, like ball bearings, lighter speed frames and tubing in the front forks. But because of its unwieldy size, it was prone to accidents that plagued even the hearty athletes who rode it (Herlihy notes Mark Twain's arduous, perilous and funny efforts to master the high wheel recounted in his essay ''Taming the Bicycle'').

After the limited success of the high wheel in the 1870's came the ''safety'' era -- the development of the bicycle style that is the most direct ancestor of our present bicycle. Safety came in the size of the bike: two wheels of equal size powered by pedals connected to a chain that propelled the rear wheel. Unlike the perilous high-wheeler, the new style was close to the ground and easy to ride. Herlihy is at his best weaving together the technical improvements that made this machine so desirable (the pneumatic tire and the diamond frame, to name just two) and the social changes that resulted from its widespread acceptance (in 1895 alone, one million riders across American society became cyclists). I was particularly taken with the details of how the components that grace our contemporary machines -- including wire spokes, tire and rim refinements, the freewheel, coaster and hand brakes, planetary gears and derailleurs -- were developed.

Herlihy's prodigious research is always entertaining, as are the period illustrations that copiously grace the volume. There are bicycle tales, like an account from Bicycling World in 1908 about Harvard's septuagenarian president, Charles W. Eliot, who cycled the several miles between his home and his office: ''Every clear morning'' Eliot ''jumps on his bicycle . . . like a boy in his teens.'' Theodore Roosevelt, New York's police commissioner, commented in 1896 on the ''extraordinary proficiency'' of the department's squad of cyclists. And we learn that the bicycle was instrumental in the early technologies of the automobile and the airplane: the pioneer automakers Henry Ford and Charles Duryea were bicycle mechanics, and the Wright brothers, who had a bicycle repair shop in Dayton, Ohio, used bicycle parts like chains and ball bearings in the Wright Flyer, which they built in their bike shop.

While reading ''Bicycle,'' I was all too often overcome with the desire to jump on my own machine. I would relish having David V. Herlihy as my cycling companion any day.

Photos: Cyclists on high-wheelers in a print by Hy Sandham, about 1887; below left, a poster by Edward Penfield, about 1897. (Photograph by The Library of Congress/from ''Bicycle'')